Rec.sport.soccer Player of the Year 2000

The vote for the ninth annual REC.SPORT.SOCCER PLAYER OF THE YEAR vote
is over. 31 days of voting have passed and 266 votes were processed.
Note, that this year, it has also been possible to vote through the World
Wide Web.
Welcome back next year - from the 1st of January to the 31st of January
in 2002 for the Rec.Sport.Soccer Player Of the Year 2001!
The contents of this article:
1. Previous Winners.
2. Rules.
3. Results.
4. Comments of the President of the RSSSF.
5. Name of voters.
6. Demographic analysis of the voters.
7. Final Word

2. RULES
The rules of the Rec.Sport.Soccer Player Of the Year vote is a modification
of the rules used by France Football for their Player of the Year award.
1. All valid votes have to submitted between the 1st of January at
00:00 MET (Mid European Time) and the 31st of January at midnight MET.
2. The vote, held each year, represents the calendar year which just
ended at the time of the vote.
3. Each vote must be sent to the Vote-taker or co-votetakers.
4. The vote must be submitted on a form including the following information:
Name of voter and his country of birth and country of residence.
5. The rest of vote should list five players in order.
6. No more than two players of the same nationality are allowed.
7. A player needs to have been active during the preceding calendar year
to be eligible to vote for.

4. Comments of the President
Some Reflections on the Vote
============================
With another record participation (266 voters, an increase of over 50%
compared to last year, which itself had a 40% increase w.r.t. 1998 vote),
the r.s.s voters have decided that France Football's journalists and
World Soccer's readers were closer to the truth than the national team
coaches voting for FIFA: Luis Figo was the best football player of 2000.
It wasn't very close in the end, and very likely Figo would have won also
if Zidane hadn't compromised his own chances with multiple red cards -
indeed not the way to go about showing you're the best player in the world.
These two were far ahead of the rest, in which last year's winner, Rivaldo,
just pipped Shevchenko, Batistuta (sadly underrated in some other polls)
and Romario (back again!) for the bronze. Each of them would have deserved
the honour.
As always, the top-15 reads as a who is who of world's soccer. Interestingly
enough, the best 'keeper (Toldo) only appears at 19th, proof of the fact that
the r.s.s audience has not been impressed with recent goal-keeping standards;
last year's best 'keeper (Kahn) showed up poorly at the European championship,
albeit as the best in a very poor team (at shared 49th place, Mehmet Scholl
was the best German field player in the poll), and other contenders such
as Barthez, Chilavert and Van der Sar have had unconvincing spells as well.
In the demographic department, Brazil were joined as 'most common birth
country' among voters by Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Unfortunately the Dutch group contained a 5-men small Heerenveen contingent
which made itself obvious in the lower echelons of the vote, but the power
of numbers ensured the overall result at the top is as expert a choice as
ever. The USA once again were the most common country of residence, but
the share of just over 11% among all voters is an all-time low - the
internet is truly internet-ional by now...
Cheers,
Karel Stokkermans